Is this the port mentioned in the Old Testament?:

What will you find if you drain the Galle harbour?

by Aditha Dissanayake

It's that time of the year once more for the Marine Archaeologists in Galle to start dwelling deep into the Indian ocean to discover the mysteries of the shipwrecks lying on the ocean bed of the Galle Harbour (from perhaps the days of Ibn Battuta!). How did they sink? Were there casualties? Did they go down as fast and as dramatically as the Titanic?

"Come, dive with us to the depths of the harbour and you will find out the answers" It's hard to imagine Marine Archaeologist, Rasika Muthukumarana, making such an invitation. After the recent attacks of the LTTE, security has been strengthened in the Galle Harbour and the last thing he would want on his hands is an amateur diver - especially one with an overblown imagination.

"Even though security has been intensified we have started our excavations" says S. M. Nandadasa, Officer-in-charge, Maritime Archaeology Unit (MAU), Galle.

Chosen as a port for its excellent strategic position - (the next piece of land, literally is the frozen waste of the Antarctic, over five thousand miles away), what treasures lie beneath the blue waters of this natural harbour, claimed by James Tennant as the port mentioned in the Old Testament?

How many ships have reached the sandy depths of the ocean floor across the passage of time?

According to Muthukumarana ten sites have already been identified within the Galle harbour, some dating as far back as the 14th century, with several stone anchors weighing almost a ton and probably made in Arabia. Another anchor found among the wrecks is said to be similar to those used in Roman times.

Yet, the most interesting of them all is the one described as the Chicken's Foot Wreck which later turned out to be a Dutch ship called the "Avondster". With an eye witness' account reporting there were no casualties, mystery shrouds the skull found inside the wreck. Who was this young man in his early thirties who went down with the ship? Was he trapped inside one of the cabins? Was he a stowaway? A slave?

Lost again

The answers might have already been discovered had not the tsunami intervened. "Our lab, a single storied building on a jetty in the old section of the port was too close to the sea to have survived the tsunami" recalls Muthukumarana. "A decade of hard work was washed away".

Among them were priceless spoons, jars, jugs and even leather belts, ill-fated and never destined to be on land, for they were swallowed by the waves again, to settle once more on the ocean floor. All was not lost though. "We did find several cupboards which were swept inland, packed with some of the artifacts.

And the skull of the mysterious young man on the Avondster? Lost and then found, buried among the rubble of what was once the MAU building. But these artifacts amount to about 30% of the treasures - thousands of centuries old - which were excavated within the past nine years. "We had to begin from zero.

But three months after the tsunami we started diving again. The Dutch government helped us with the money and the equipment. Now our lab is inside the Fort, and hopefully, away from the next tsunami" says Muthukumarana, wistfully.

Two "sites"

With the Avondster project completed, work continues on two other projects. Preferring to call them "sites" and not shipwrecks Muthukumarana says he finds underwater excavations far more thrilling than digging for artifacts on land. "Safety comes first" he explains. "Even though there are poison plants the harbour is safe from dangerous fish like sharks".

Safe for divers, yes, but how safe for the ships that used to sail into the harbour from as far away as China, during the time of the Song Dynasty? Protected from the northeast monsoon but exposed to the southwest, the entrance to the harbour is said to be dangerous because of the many submerged rocks and reefs.

Yet among the Asian ports of the United Dutch East India Company, Galle was second only to Jakarta (then called Batavia) Of the six VOC ships found on the ocean bed, three were wrecked while entering or leaving the harbour, two within the harbour and one outside the bay while waiting for the pilot to bring her in.

At the moment, in spite of the high drama which took place barely a month ago, the waters of the harbour, reflecting the murky grey sky is quiet and looks forbidding to the amateur diver. But for the professional marine archaeologists it's time to don the oxygen masks, the diving paraphernalia and splash boldly into a world which no ordinary mortal ever gets to see.

What they will come up with, this time round, is anybody's guess.

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History

Perhaps the earliest recorded reference to Galle comes from the great Arab traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited the port which he calls Qali, in the mid 14th century. The Portuguese first arrived in 1505, when a fleet commanded by Lorenzo de Almeida took shelter from a storm in the lee of the town.

Clearly the strategic significance of the harbour impressed the Portuguese, for 82 years later, in 1587, they seized control of the town from the Sinhala kings and began the construction of the Galle Fort.

This even marked the beginning of almost four centuries of European domination of the city, resulting in the fascinating hybrid - architecturally, culturally and ethnically - which Galle is today.

Maritime Archaeology Unit

Instigated by the Department of Archaeology, the Maritime Archaeology Unit comes under the Central Cultural Fund. The present Director of the MAU is Dr. Mohan Abeyratne.

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